Libération newspaper publishes whole front page in English

A row over a proposal to allow French universities to teach some classes in English took a fresh turn when Libération, one of France's top national newspapers published its entire front page in the "language of Shakespeare".

The left-leaning daily renowned for its arresting headlines and canny French word play, threw its full weight behind the proposed bill up for debate tomorrow in parliament with the headline: "Teaching in English. LET'S DO IT."

In a bold move that may have left some non-English speakers in the dark, as it offered no French translation, the paper wrote: "Tomorrow, the National Assembly will discuss the government's proposed bill to teach some classes in English at French universities. The controversy rages on." The paper went further, by even putting other unrelated front-page headlines in English, including one on a Bill Gates project reading: "Sex and condoms: the best is yet to come."

Libération was responding to detractors of a bill to be debated in parliament on Wednesday that would relax a 1994 "Toubon" law, which stipulates that French must be used in universities while all but banning lessons in another language and visits from foreign guest teachers.

Education unions have called a strike in protest at the measure that some claim will turn French into a "dead language".

Geneviève Fioraso, the Minister for Higher Education, claims the measure is aimed at increasing the number of foreign students at French universities from the current level of 12 per cent of the total to 15 per cent by 2020.

Today, she insisted the entire row was "wonderfully hypocritical" as for the past 15 years France's Grandes Ecoles – its Oxbridge-style hothouses for the country's future elite – have "flouted the Toubon law without anyone saying anything against it." She said the new law would iron out this "de facto (linguistic) inequality".

But critics, such as journalist Bernard Pivot, a leading figure in French cultural circles, said it could kill off French.

"If we allow English to be introduced into our universities and for teaching science and the modern world, French will be vandalised and become poorer," he said.

"It will turn into a commonplace language, or worse, a dead language."

Top Gallic linguist Claude Hagège also declared "war" on the law, saying a battle for "our identity" was at stake.

The influential Academie Francaise, set up in 1635 and the official guardian of the language, has also warned it risked "marginalising our language".

"Quite on the contrary," France's education minister, Vincent Peillon told France 2. "It's the difference between patriots and nationalists: nationalists have always abdicated; they think France is great when it cuts itself off Patriotism is a France that is sure of itself." Libération agreed, warning: "Let's stop behaving like the last representatives of a Gaulish village under siege." Antoine Compagnon, professor at the highly prestigious Collège de France and at the University of Columbia in the US, said the row confused two separate issues – improving the English of university teachers and researchers to boost their international standing and making French universities more attractive for foreign students. In the first case, he suggested a spell in an English-speaking country would be best.

As for attracting more foreign students, he said it made sense to offer more lessons in English. The danger, however, he added, was having foreign graduates complete their studies "without having mastered French". In English language countries, that would be "totally unacceptable", he said.